In our now ninth month in Iraq we finally have been tested and given the most dangerous tasking of the 'Misfits' of AT 4. With a daunting cold sweat running down the forehead of every individual, we conduct our new mission. Saturated nervousness is almost overwhelming as it creeps deep into the nostrils and nearly stings as it scrapes down the back of the throat. 'Patrol the inside of the base,' is our newest special order and responsibility. It seems that all military strategy has no say in this one, making my title nothing but sarcastic.
Even if you are not adequately knowledgeable about military strategy, you would still understand the absurdity of this situation now at hand. Common sense would dictate that patrolling inside of a base guarded by 24 hour surveillance by individuals at posts that have been positioned to cover all 360 degrees of that encampment would seemingly be ludicrous and/or a complete and utter waste of time. Perhaps a patrol outside the perimeter would be better warranted in the logic of Army, but as far as 2 kitty goes it seems to be just another normal operation.
Despite my horribly sad depression bout that I'm currently encountering, things here on the COP are actually running pretty smoothly. For the most part. The ridiculous inside the wire patrols are a slight hiccup in the equation of returning things to a make sense atmosphere, but it isn't too long a tedious a task and denotes it as anything but comic in the end result. The thing that will throw a slightly bigger hiccup, more annoying one, is the fact that we are getting the final platoon in our company back after they have been on lone to another unit. This will make the living conditions here, that much tighter. The phones and internet sources, which are already at a low, mixed with our lack of water for showers and food will make many things seemingly more grim. It will be nice, however to have another platoon here so that force protection is not as redundant as it has been, allowing an extra day off from it with the new element.
The conversations that we were having during our force pro shift, were again along the lines of made for tv movie. Or at least capable of a reality tv show. That in itself was a topic of conversation as we discussed the likely hood of MTV sending a camera crew out to live with us and film our daily lives, so that America could see how absolutely miserable and depressed we are, because they deserve it. Other topics of conversation included our 'firsts' stories, which are no where near as romantic as we've all wanted them to be. And we also discussed our fully nude calendar of the Boyz of AT4 and were trying to decide the best and worst ways to shoot such a calendar.
I've tried to stay away, at least in the blog, from talking about my emotions and mental state while just trying to focus on the problems in my life and the life of the platoon mates. This is mostly because I hate the fact that emotions are such a weakness in humans, and personally some times I feel as if I'm failing myself with the inability to control them. Another reason, because I don't want to read about your piss poor life, and I'm sure you don't want to read about mine. What's changed? The month, and being in the 9th month of deployment, the strain has really started to get to me. To everybody.
I don't think the platoon has slept. Not in awhile. The first six months of this deployment were filled with more patrolling along with exercise from the gym, that we built up a great tolerance for performing tired, worn out, and at near exhaustion. We held that hardship and stamina for six months, growing accustomed to it. A few hours of sleep a night for months at a time, filled with strenuous missions, which were followed by hours of hard work in the gym we all adapted and overcame conditioning our bodies for it. But now, as Iraq is the safest place on earth that we no longer need to patrol, we have been stuck, held up in this small spaghetti factory and not allowed to do more than our 12 hours of work every three days, along with our normal physical training schedule. Not grueling whatsoever, not to mention to compare it to the then and was.
The here and now had been a nice break. The first week that nothing was happening, it was nice. Nice to get a break, a day off and some relaxation. But all good things come to an end, which doesn't necessarily mean that it changes, because it didn't. I would consider the group of guys I'm surrounded with 'hard chargers.' These circumstances, keeping us dormant, unused and bored is not good for our health. The first thing that we saw, was a heightened testosterone level across the platoon. The next, which is still going on, is the lack of sleep because of the insomnia the platoon has developed. This is probably due to the fact that we haven't been doing the same things that we had built a tolerance for. The next stage is unclear. Perhaps the rest of the platoon is going to follow in my footsteps and become horribly depressed with no sense of purpose or use. Morale is low, I'm, we're burned out from this. The cabin fever has set in, and despite the efforts of anyone trying to improve their own situation or ours, it doesn't appear to have an ending. The only thing we have left to look forward too, the only thing we know is going to change, is that we pack our bags and head for home in 90 days.
Steve Perry
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